Term Limits and Bad Law

Just ran across this story that local politicians Cleo Kirk, Walter Bailey and Julian Bolton have been handed a victory in their fight against term limits. I haven't had a chance to read the court rulings, but I wanted to put up this post so that other can find them.

Please right-click and save these to your computer.

The Majority Ruling
The Dissenting Ruling

Why the Commercial Appeal didn't have links to these documents, I don't know. They still don't "get" the Web. I downloaded these from the Knoxville News-Sentinel website. Their URL is wrong, though, so I'm hosting them here for now.

It's way too late, so I'll have comment later.

One quick comment, though, on the use of the "81% of Shelby County voters wanted term limits" statement. The measure was approved by 81% of people who voted in that election and not 81% of all Shelby Countians. I've tried looking up the voter turnout of that 1994 election, but can't find it. Depending on what type of election it was, turnout would have ranged between 15% and maybe 60% of total voters. It was a crushing majority of those who voted, but possibly not even a majority of all voters.